


Open Doors

by ChocoChipBiscuit



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: 5 Times Fic, Alcohol, F/F, Food, Open Marriage, Open Relationships, background Aveline/Donnic - Freeform, slightly less than canon-typical slurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-01 13:09:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12705648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoChipBiscuit/pseuds/ChocoChipBiscuit
Summary: Five times Isabela bothers Aveline at the arse-end of midnight and one time Aveline returns the favor.





	Open Doors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AceQueenKing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/gifts).



> I adore Avebela, and the prompt about how Isabela is just about the only person who could show up at Aveline's door at 4am and not get thrown out just stuck with me. <3 Thank you for making the prompt and organizing this exchange!
> 
>  
> 
> Also, an emetophobia warning for scene iv. if anyone needs that.

_i._

Isabela’s spectacularly drunk, breath fruity with Orlesian red— a much better vintage than she usually drinks, since her purse sags empty more often than not. Perhaps it’s the floral notes, the jamminess and stone fruit aroma and whatever else that overstuffed vintner with the _terrible_ run of cards kept droning on about (truly dreadful, such terrible luck, Isabela only had to palm her cards twice and he kept losing on his own) but it inspires Isabela to take a turn in the Viscount’s gardens. She hums under her breath, knees in the soil and pulling up pink and purple flowers with a wet squelch of dirt.

Isabela takes another swig from the bottle and smacks her lips. She pours a splash onto the earth, vague memory plucking at her sleeves. Her mother did the same thing at graves, or does, or used to, but the umbilical chain is long-broken and Isabela doesn’t know whether that’s still true. Isabela doesn’t even know whether she’s mourning the dead flowers or her own childhood and the uncertainty rolls in the bottom of her gut like an abyssal tide. So she grants herself another sip and considers who might best appreciate this bouquet.

Which is why Isabela shows up on Aveline’s doorstep so late it’s become early, the moon chewed down to a low fingernail in the sky. Isabela raps the ridiculous brass lion knocker against the heavy door, then adds a few knuckle-thumps for good measure. She stands back on her heels, smiles.

Aveline’s hair is a red haystack, mouth still smeared with sleep and her eyes crusty and narrow. She opens her mouth, shoulders back and ready to bellow, so Isabela shoves the flowers at her.

“Marigolds, Aveline!”

Aveline’s eyes bulge and the vein on her forehead starts throbbing. Isabela can count Aveline’s objections, _tick tick tick_ , in every pulse, every flick of Aveline’s eyes and the ways her fists clench, shoulders tighten.

Finally, Aveline swallows down arguments like teeth and settles on, “These are _petunias.”_

“And they’re all yours!”

“They still have mud on them!”

Isabela shakes them obligingly, dropping dirt on Aveline’s bare foot. “There! Less mud!”

“Where did you steal these from?”

Isabela puts on her most injured expression, clasping her hand (and the bottle) over her heart. “Is it truly theft, when these beautiful blooms occur naturally in nature? Is it truly theft, to share such beauty with a beloved friend? Is it truly—”

“Yes, yes it is,” Aveline groans. “Why must you torment me so?”

“Because who else would open their door for me at the arse-end of midnight?” Isabela says flippantly, but her heart keels hard to starboard as she says it. Merrill would probably let her in, but the kitten needs her sleep. There’s Hawke but that means dealing with the entire family under one roof and they live in this tight-knit prickly _closeness_ that whips right through Isabela like she’s an empty cloak. Varric snores and Anders has Justice and Fenris _still_ hasn’t bothered clearing the corpses from the mansion, so—

Aveline’s jaw softens, and Isabela bristles because she doesn’t need _pity_ from the big girl, she can ball it up and shove it up her arse, but Aveline takes the flowers. Aveline fills a glass of water and puts them in, in all their muddy glory.

With a sigh, Aveline says, “Fine. But _you_ are cooking breakfast.”

Isabela burns the eggs— not on purpose, but in the accidental way that happens when you’re in the middle of telling a _really good_ story and the spatula becomes an accessory as you recreate the details of an epic duel so you ignore the blackened, crunchy bits on the edge of the pan until they start smoking— and left some shell in it, but that’s okay. They eat their burnt, crunchy eggs at Aveline’s kitchen table, petunias beaming proudly from the center.

 

_ii._

There are some things you just can’t share without binding yourselves closer, like the exchange of hair and bone in some unsanitary cult ritual. Getting trapped in the Deep Roads by Varric’s pissant brother and forced to recycle air between their lungs and bundle back to back with a tremendous hot brick of a woman— because Varric snores, because Hawke _kicks like a bloody mule_ in her sleep and Isabela _still_ hasn’t forgiven her for the bruised thighs and creaked ribs— and sleep tangled in the same sweaty blankets and fight over whose cold hands go on whose warm belly was one of those. Sharing a bed is easy as a marked deck of cards, but sleeping?

Isabela doesn’t get _nightmares_. Never did in the Deep Roads, still doesn't now that they're out. She can sleep soundly in the midst of a screaming gale on a rolling ship in shark-infested waters.

But sometimes sleep doesn’t come on those grey-skinned nights when her own breath’s a ghost in her lungs, when the air wears itself into cobwebs over her bones, and she finds herself at Aveline’s door again.

Isabela’s still occasionally surprised that Aveline doesn’t just sleep at the barracks or in her office, walled in by stacks of paper and errant snores. The office is an utter labyrinth of bureaucracy, which probably means Aveline’s the minotaur and Isabela the helpful ball of string. Or something. Isabela’s never been terribly fond of the classics, prefers to recognize the world as it _is_ rather than pretend that stories hold any power other than the breath they’re given.

There’s a ridiculous pot of marigolds on the front stoop, actual fucking _marigolds_ , obscenely bright under this dismal pall of late night into early morning. There’s still that ridiculous brass lion knocker. Isabela gives it a few firm raps before she bundles her hands over her arms and hops back and forth, one leg to the other, some futile attempt at staying warm until Aveline opens the door and Andraste’s flaming knickers but Aveline’s hair is in _pigtails_ now, sleep-mussed ruddy flaming ginger _pigtails_. Under any other circumstances Isabela would point and tease and be absolutely _vicious_ with it, pop this domestic bubble for the silly farce it is.

Aveline takes one look at her and sighs.

Isabela nestles next to Aveline in the bed, snug under Aveline’s massive shoulder and snoring into her armpit. Big girl’s bed smells like herbs, lavender and something else to help keep the bugs away, plus a whiff of cheap soap and clean sweat and warm skin.

Isabela wraps herself in it and sleeps sound.

Aveline makes breakfast in the morning: egg-battered toast, sausage, and a fried tomato as one paltry concession to the necessity of plant matter. They spend precious minutes cheerfully arguing over whether tomatoes count as fruits or vegetables, but Isabela considers herself the winner because she gets to steal an extra sausage while Aveline drones on about why a tomato is, in fact, _not_ a fruit.

 

_iii._

The Chant claims guilt tastes of blood and pyres, but Isabela knows guilt in thick leather and dry parchment, ancient ink worn sour on the page. She knocks on Aveline’s door, knuckles thudding the wood, and Aveline gives her one of those insufferable _knowing_ looks but swallows down the lecture brewing on her tongue in favor of mug after mug of overstewed and sugared tea.

Isabela turns her mug in her hand, over and over, the weight of it in her palm, the smooth lip against her teeth, clicking like a set of nervous castanets. She sips too fast, the scald somewhere between quick-gulped whiskey and crotch itch, _deeply unfair_ prices for the little bit of fun you get up front.

 _I came back!_ she wants to explain. Or yell, or scream. Just another unfair thing to add to a forever-list of things that can’t be mended. She’s a liar and a thief and never pretended anything else, don’t _look_ at her like that, but—

Aveline rolls up her sleeves and pummels dough with her hands, makes Isabela pull out a battered baking sheet and oil to grease the pan. Aveline adds dried cherries, drops the batter in scoops and sets them in the oven. Fifteen minutes of silence later— and silence is too soft a word for the tension that strums between them, that drags between Isabela’s teeth and pulls itself in long strings, for the way Aveline’s foot taps the floor and her eyes watch Isabela’s and Isabela tries very hard not to think about licking constellations across Aveline’s freckles because this is one of those rare occasions where spontaneous sexual combustion might be the most disastrous way to leave this world— Aveline pulls the pan from the oven.

Isabela chews mechanically, the scone dredging the bottom of her stomach. _Hawke’s_ stomach had been run clean through by the Arishok, and suddenly Isabela wants to spew every bite of scone she’s eaten today and yesterday and yesteryear and everything in between.

Eventually, Isabela lets Aveline drag her to Hawke’s too-quiet mansion where their dauntless leader sleeps. The bedroom’s clotted with elfroot and Anders pour mana like water, like mothers’ milk, and how strange to think that now here’s another thing she and Hawke have in common: they’ve both lost their mothers. How strange, how sad, how utterly pathetic.

Isabela usually thinks of guards as obstacles, to be bribed or foiled or bypassed entirely, but Aveline’s more like some shaggy mastiff bringing half-chewed slippers and her tail drubbing Isabela’s shins black and blue. Won't ever let her go, won't ever leave her alone, and sometimes Isabela hates her to spitting fury, but—

It’s not about honor, but duty. All mistakes made good in the end, and surely Isabela must be one of Aveline’s biggest mistakes but Aveline pulls her to bed and tucks her in under a hideous patchwork quilt. Aveline kisses her forehead, gives her tea and honey, and lets her sleep for a week.

 

_iv._

Isabela rolls into Aveline’s door in a giant wheelbarrow full of flowers, clutching her wedding gift: a giant sign that says “DON’T.” Hawke’s pushing the wheelbarrow and Merrill laughs as flowers spill about the edges, a petaled path that will be stomped into the cobbles once the city wakes up, but for now it’s a riot of pink and gold mapping everywhere they’ve been. Isabela splashes wine into her mouth, knocks, then springs up to kiss and fountain it into a sputtering Aveline’s face as soon as Aveline opens the door. Aveline’s hair is a red straw-stack _mess_ , now dripping with fermented grape and purple spatters, but it’s gorgeous in disarray, lit up like a bonfire on a summer night.

Isabela argues that truly, this was all completely and undeniably _necessary_ because Aveline had refused to go out for her bachelorette, so that required Isabela to bring it _in._ Merrill goes helpfully doe-eyed in her paper party hat and Hawke clasps her hands with a jingle of beads and bracelets and gold rings on every finger and Isabela juts her cleavage and Aveline relents enough to let them all in. Merrill kisses Aveline’s wine-smeared cheek and drops another wedding gift over her head: a necklace of green tourmaline, polished sea-glass smooth.

It turns out that the big girl projectile-vomits with anxiety, which she _claimed_ she hadn’t been feeling until her so-called friends showed up on her doorstep. She paints three walls and the bathroom floor, and Isabela uncharitably hopes that Donnic bloody _drowns_ Aveline in flowers to make up for this mess, then squishes that thought for utter pettiness. Aveline’s done well in marriage, chose her man each time, never felt her vows as a millstone on her neck. Isabela and Aveline both have one husband in the ground, and Isabela thinks of offering advice, maybe, something for wedding-night jitters, or at least reminding Aveline that it’s never too late to call the whole thing off and flee to Antiva, but Aveline washes away those good intentions with another wave of vomit.

So Hawke makes mint tea and Merrill scrubs and Isabela holds Aveline’s hair and tells dirty stories until Aveline’s too scandalized to do anything but sputter, which is a marked improvement over vomit. They don’t trust Aveline to keep food down yet— Andraste’s tits but _Aveline_ doesn’t trust Aveline to keep food down yet— but everyone else gets a very serviceable glob of porridge and Aveline sips tea until her stomach settles and her breath no longer reeks.

If Aveline’s eyes are purple and sleepless during her own wedding, well. Donnic’s hardly any better.

Isabela kisses them both and dodges the bouquet.

 

_v._

_Home may be the mouth of a shark, but if it's the only place that lets you in_ …

The words rattle her skull like glass beads, tattered lines of poetry from Hawke’s library or her ex-husband’s books. She can’t remember which, which might have bothered her in another life but her memory’s done a silver-coin flip that spins it unrecognizable. It’s stupid either way, to think that words on pages tell the truth of anything, that maps tell anything of geography. Home is a deck on a ship on the open sea and Isabela’s had nothing like that for years, but...

Her feet somehow path their way to Aveline’s door, that ridiculous cross-eyed lion knocker and the potted marigolds and the stoop and the knowledge that a beautiful woman-shaped battering ram will sigh and let her in for biscuits and over-sugared tea.

Isabela had expected to be squished out of Aveline’s life with the arrival of a husband and (eventually) more ginger-headed children than even Isabela can shake a stick at, but on the nights when sleep won’t come and Isabela’s scraped thin across the small hours, Donnic just sighs and rolls over and Aveline scootches and just like that, there’s always room for Isabela. Isabela doesn’t even have to fold herself small, just nuzzles up to the freckled swell of Aveline’s chest and the steady drum of a familiar heartbeat. Donnic doesn’t even leer, good man that he is. Not that Isabela would _mind_ him leering but it’s dreadfully polite coming from a man that Isabela’s already seen with Aveline’s thumb up his ass.

Aveline and Donnic have their own self-contained dyad, soppy as watercolor kittens. Isabela’s too full of sharp angles and broken glass to offer anything of comfort for the sodden newspaper of Aveline’s heart, but that’s the beauty of being a sometimes-visitor. Aveline and Donnic get to be soppy and married and Isabela and Aveline get to snooze and grease up their pearl-diving jokes and Isabela and Donnic can smile over breakfast the next morning.

Really, the best part of Isabela’s intrusions into Aveline’s married life is that Donnic _cooks_. He cooks _breakfast_. He flips crispy little pancakes soaked in butter and syrup and fries potatoes with bits of pepper and onion and makes omelettes on request and occasionally Aveline has to shoo Isabela away from seconds, thirds, fourths from the groaning breakfast table.

Isabela teaches him diamondback and warns him of Aveline’s tantrums when she loses. (”I do not!” Aveline bellows.) Donnic rubs small circles on Aveline’s back with the palm of his hand, soothing.

Isabela still has no desire for the married life, would absolutely dive off a cliff and dash herself into red meat and shattered bone rather than get married again, but—

Aveline deserves sunsets and rainbows and the swift hand of justice sweeping all aside. Life is still deeply unfair, but at least sometimes they get it right.

 

_i._

There’s too much to do, to much to say, too much left _un-_ said in this maelstrom of holy rubble and blasphemed ash. Isabela’s caught between the whirlpool and the rocks, careening ever-farther off course because her own selfish instincts are to get a ship, get a crew, _get the hell out of Kirkwall_ but there’s Merrill to hold and Hawke to protect and a handful of black feathers in her back pocket that she doesn’t know whether to burn or scatter. Most of the city’s still in bone-rattled shock, hiding from the roving templars and fleeing mages, but there will always be people seeking opportunity from chaos.

Isabela won’t be trapped fighting for crumbs when there’s an entire ocean for a getaway.

Isabela steals sleep where she can, fifteen or twenty minute catnaps because sleep is better than bread. You can take mouthfuls of dry crust or hard biscuit while still moving, but _sleep_ is not so easily packed. She keeps her daggers in hand and leans against the walls of the alienage where Merrill’s organizing the barricades. She takes Varric’s book of contacts— only one of many, only the one he pushes in her hands as he tells her, “Rivaini, loot the silver,” so she pilfers the candlesticks on the way out— and Fenris’ arm and Hawke’s hand. She’s stolen her own life thrice over now, from child to wife to pirate and now into the great blue unknown, but—

Aveline strides up the deck of the ship, grey ash in her hair and bruised shadows on her face. She stinks of smoke and iron and _duty_ , always that damn metal-edge scream of _obligation_ , the kind of crushing authority that makes Isabela want to snap and spit and slam her against a wall and kiss her until their teeth clatter, until their bodies cleave together like meat and salt and charnel mud. Before Isabela can say anything, before Isabela can shape breath to barbs and speak those little hurts that will make things better in the long run (because _Maker_ it’s better to part angry than sad, because fury can spur you to greater acts of spite but grief is only an anchor to drag you down), Aveline shoves a bundle in her hands.

“Here,” Aveline says.

Isabela stares dumbfounded at the half-dozen meat pies wrapped in a red kerchief. They’re cold, of course. The sort of rib-sticking caloric glue that you can find at any of the middling-respectable Fereldan inns. Aveline probably didn’t bake them herself, wouldn’t have had _time_ while they were storming the Gallows and fighting statues and stitch-corpse monsters.

“I know you’re going, but you better _come back_ , you hear?” Aveline says. It’s a harsh voice, a good voice, the sort of sternness that speaks authority to her guards and fear to any sort of criminal that’s not Isabela, but oh—

Isabela breaks pretense and grabs Aveline’s face and pulls her down into a drowning kiss, all her breath gone _whoosh_ out of her and burning, burning, like she’s been dropped in deep water with stones around her waist. There’s too much loss already, Isabela won’t lose this one last moment—

“I love you too, you tart,” Aveline growls into her mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> Isabela's mis-remembered poetry in scene v. owes apologies to both Robert Frost and Warsan Shire.


End file.
